Saturday, November 21, 2015

Fumiko Koga is a dear friend I know through etegami exchange, but whose talents and curiosity are most brilliantly expressed in cut-paper art cards and paper crafts. (Do a search for Fumiko on my mailart gallery blog to see many, many samples of her work.)

A couple days ago, she sent me four pieces of origami paper folded into narrow triangles, along with a diagram showing how to insert the points of those triangles into one another to form a picture frame. I followed her directions, which resulted in the square frame shown above, with a tilted empty space in the middle. I filled the empty space with some origami paper of my own and decorated it with snowflakes and an etegami fox in his snowy den. Then I glued the whole thing onto a stiff board so I could hang it more easily.

I forgot to take a photo of the materials before I put the frame together, so I've attached one taken by Linda Austin, also from our etegami group, who received similar parts from Fumiko to make her own frame. Such a fun collaboration!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

I was thrilled when two customers who had recently ordered etegami smart phone cases from my RedBubble shop sent me pictures. Unless my RB customers tell me themselves, I have no way of knowing who they are. So it was gratifying to be able to thank them directly. Now I crave one of those etegami phone cases for myself...only I don't have a smart phone. Maybe I need to discuss this with Santa.

A Beginner's Guide to Etegami

what is etegami?

Etegami (e= "picture"; tegami= "letter/message") are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words. They are usually done on postcards so that they can be easily mailed off to one's friends. Though etegami has few hard-and-fast rules, traditional tools and materials include writing brushes, sumi ink, blocks of water-soluble, mineral-based pigments called gansai, and washi postcards that have varying degrees of "bleed." They often depict some ordinary item from everyday life, especially items that bring a particular season to mind.